These soldiers that killed those innocent civilians were never punished. the guy that blew the whistle on their crimes is sentenced to 35 years.
:biggums:

Bush and Obama are both war criminals, and the only reason the Hague doesnt prosecute them is because they have a powerful army around them.

Edit: a soft guy like manning isnt going to survive in jail. he gonna get raped.

DCL

08-21-2013 04:30 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

i remember an innocent time when america wasn't flushing itself down the toilet...

KevinNYC

08-21-2013 04:37 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

First, your honor, I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States.

At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continuing to affect me. Although a considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions.

I understood what I was doing, and decisions I made. However, I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions.

Those factors are clear to me now, through both self-refection during my confinement in various forms, and through the merits and sentencing testimony that I have seen here.

I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.

The last few years have been a learning experience. I look back at my decisions and wonder how on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better (unintelligible) on decisions of those with the proper authority.

In retrospect, I should have worked more aggressively inside the system, as we discussed during the provenance statement. I had options, and I should have used these options.

Unfortunately, I can't go back and change things. I can only go forward. I want to go forward. Before I can do that, I understand that I must pay a price for my decisions and actions.

Once I pay that price, I hope to one day live in a manner that I haven't been able to in the past. I want to be a better person, to go to college, to get a degree and to have a meaningful relationship with my sister, with my sister's family and my family.

I want to be a positive influence in their lives, just as my Aunt Debra has been to me. I have flaws and issues that I have to deal with, but I know that I can and will be a better person.

I hope that you can give me the opportunity to prove, not through words, but through conduct, that I am a good person and that I can return to a productive place in society. Thank you, your honor

Hopefully, Manning will be able to follow through and become a better person.

Scholar

08-21-2013 04:39 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

This is complete and utter bullshit. I can't believe a man's entire life is about to go to waste while real threats to our country (aka our politicians) are still free men.

MavsSuperFan

08-21-2013 04:41 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

Originally Posted by falc39

Snowden's decision to flee US completely justified now.

I cant believe some people argued he should have stayed in America to face "Justice".

Even nixon didnt do this to whistleblowers. Think about it for a sec the supposedly liberal democratic president is doing something to whistleblowers even Nixon did do to Daniel Ellsberg when he released the pentagon papers

Quote:

The Papers revealed that the U.S. had expanded its war with bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US.[11] The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, the John F. Kennedy administration had planned to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in a November 1963 coup. President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign,[5] including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.[12]

ellsberg was considered a hero once, look how far we have fallen as a nation

MavsSuperFan

08-21-2013 04:44 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinNYC

Hopefully, Manning will be able to follow through and become a better person.

His releases embarrassed a few diplomats

no one yet has been able to give specifics about the people he hurt.

I guess he hurt those murderers who killed civilians in iraq, you know by letting people see the murder the pentagon wanted to cover up.

If you want manning to go to jail, I cant imagine what you would have wanted to do to ellsberg when he released the pentagon papers.

Honestly man is there anything the government can do that you wont defend?

knickballer

08-21-2013 04:47 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinNYC

Hopefully, Manning will be able to follow through and become a better person.

I hope you go to prison to become a "better person" :facepalm

Jameerthefear

08-21-2013 04:51 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Wait can someone explain this to me?

MavsSuperFan

08-21-2013 04:52 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinNYC

Hopefully, Manning will be able to follow through and become a better person.

The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.

Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.

"The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence," Mendez writes.

The findings of cruel and inhuman treatment are published as an addendum to the special rapporteur's report to the UN general assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights. They are likely to reignite criticism of the US government's harsh treatment of Manning ahead of his court martial later this year.

Manning, 24, was arrested on May 29 2010 at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad, where he was working as an intelligence analyst. Manning has been charged with 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, relating to the leaking a massive trove of state secrets to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Mendez, who runs the UN office that investigates incidents of alleged torture around the world, told the Guardian: "I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture."

Manning was initially held for almost three months at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and then transferred in July 2010 to the Marine corps base at Quantico in Virginia. He was held there for another eight months in conditions that aroused widespread condemnation, including being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and being made to strip naked at night.

In his opening letter to the US government on December 30 2010, Mendez said that the prolonged period of isolated confinment was believed to have been imposed "in an effort to coerce him into 'cooperation' with the authorities, allegedly for the purpose of persuading him to implicate others."

It is known that the US department of justice is conducting a grand jury in Virginia exploring the possibility of bringing charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

The US mission to the UN in Geneva responded to Mendez on January 27 2011. It said that the US government "is committed to protecting human rights in our country and abroad, and we value the work of the special rapporteur".

In a later letter, dated May 19 2011, the Pentagon's legal counsel told Mendez that it was satisfied that Manning's treatment at Quantico had been fine. "Though Private Manning was classified as a maximum custody detainee at Quantico, he occupied the very same type of single-occupancy cell that all other pretrial detainees occupied."

But the Pentagon's arguments did not impress the special rapporteur. He stressed in his final conclusions that "solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions." Moreover, "[d]epending on the specific reason for its application, conditions, length, effects and other circumstances, solitary confinement can amount to a breach of article seven of the international covenant on civil and political rights, and to an act defined in article one or article 16 of the convention against torture."

He also said that the US government had tried to justify Manning's solitary confinement by calling it "prevention of harm watch". Yet the military had offered no details as to what actual harm was being prevented.

Mendez told the Guardian that he could not reach a definitive conclusion on whether Manning had been tortured because he has consistently been denied permission by the US military to interview the prisoner under acceptable circumstances.

The Pentagon has refused to allow Mendez to see Manning in private, insisting that all conversations must be monitored. "You should have no expectation of privacy in your communications with Private Manning," the Pentagon wrote.

The lack of privacy is a violation of human rights procedures, the UN says, and considered unacceptable by the UN special rapporteur.

Manning's travails in solitary confinement came to an end on April 20 2011 when he was transferred from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was held in more open conditions. He is currently being held in a facility in Virginia so that he can make frequent pre-trial appearances at Fort Meade in Maryland ahead of his eventual court martial.

DCL

08-21-2013 04:52 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

punishing citizens who dare to speak the truth against the government for its wrongdoings is something you'd expect from a bullshit state like f..king north korea...

and he tried to get someone in the military to prosecute this atrocity. Everyone being killed were civilians. They also shot at the people that went to try to save the dying victims, kill a father and his 2 kids.

The pentagon refused to do anything. Manning tried to get American news outlets like the NY times to publish the story, they refused. Eventually he was forced to release the info to wikileaks. The government was embarrassed and wanted to make an example out him, so that nobody would ever have the courage to blow the whistle on their crimes in the future.

read that report to see all the stuff he exposed that our government was trying to hide. Basically the government is punishing him for exposing their crimes. Punish the whistleblower ignore the crimes being exposed = modern American government.

Quote:

1. The 'Collateral Murder' Apache helicopter video
Manning released this graphic video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack on a group of people gathered in Baghdad. Two were employees of the Reuters news agency. A member of the helicopter crew refers to the "dead bastards" he killed, and the crew lights up a passing van that stopped to help victims of the first round of gunfire.

2. The Reykjavik-13 cable
Far less known than the Apache video was this classified 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik released on Feb. 18, 2010. The first of Manning's leaks to be published, it caused an immediate sensation in Iceland for its frank discussion of U.S. indifference toward problems in the small island nation's banking sector.

3. The Iraq War Logs

4. The Afghanistan War Logs

5. Detention, abuse and torture
Manning's leaks included more than 700 Guantanamo detainee files, many revealing that the U.S. had little reason to continue holding its prisoners. The 250,000 State Department cables he leaked detailed U.S. diplomatic pressure on foreign countries to ignore or excuse extraordinary renditions carried out by the CIA in apparent violation of international law. They also showed that the U.S. routinely failed to investigate reports of prisoner abuse and summary execution by the Iraqi military.

6. U.S. complicity with repressive Arab regimes
It was no surprise to many living in the Arab world that the United States routinely collaborated with Arab dictators behind closed doors while proclaiming its commitment to democracy in public. Manning's leaks of sensitive State Department cables, however, laid bare the American hypocrisy in the Middle East. By some accounts, they served as a catalyst for the regime changes around the region that would come to be known as the Arab Spring.

The only thing manning did wrong was not running as far and as fast as he could, like snowden.

KevinNYC

08-21-2013 05:05 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

Quote:

Originally Posted by MavsSuperFan

Even nixon didnt do this to whistleblowers. Think about it for a sec the supposedly liberal democratic president is doing something to whistleblowers even Nixon did do to Daniel Ellsberg when he released the pentagon papers

You don't know the history of the Ellsberg case do you?

longtime lurker

08-21-2013 05:06 PM

Re: Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years

SMH. I doubt this guy will survive in prison. Couldn't he have gotten something ridiculous like 200 years?